


Beauty In Eccentricity

by theboardwalkbody



Category: The Used
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboardwalkbody/pseuds/theboardwalkbody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story inspired by tumblr user rafyki.<br/>In this fic Bert is a pianist. It’s set in an early- 1900’s kind of setting. Bert, formally known as Robert McCracken, is seen by townsfolk to be super eccentric. Juliana gets hired as his maid and it is then that she realizes he’s not what everyone thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty In Eccentricity

Juliana Gaffney always considered herself the most unluckiest lucky person there ever was. Lucky in the sense that she had a job, which was hard to come by as of late, that paid better than average and allowed her to keep bread on her table and clothes on her back (as well as allow herself to afford some frivolities on top of that). Unlucky, on the other hand, that her heart was being broken daily. It was a price she had to pay, she decided, to live a comfortable life. If she were to be truly honest she would have been even more miserable if she quit the job because she would have actually missed the cause of her heartache. The only thing that would have been best would be if she had never accepted the job offer, never known the beauty of her employer, but she did and she does and it is too late now to give it up. 

Her employer was a very eccentric man by the name of Robert McCracken. He owned a large estate at the edge of town on the riverside. Rarely he ventured out and when he did it was always dusk or dark so few people often saw him. He'd get to shops right before they closed and never stayed longer than it took to get the items he was after. Rumors spread around the town, as they must, that there must be something wrong with him. What kind of a man goes out only around dark? Silly claims that he must be some sort of demon who can not venture out in daylight slipped off the tongues of those who cared enough to talk about a man they did not know. 

It was three months ago, an April morning, when the townsfolk went in to a bit of a shock at seeing their rumored-vampire out in the bright morning sun. He walked around the town square and directly up to the bulletin board in front of the Town Hall where he pinned a single piece of paper. Juliana was there that morning and she watched as he walked quickly over to his destination and then turned and headed on back to his home, no doubt, without uttering a single hello or greeting to anyone. Several people simply stared, as if they had never seen a man pin a notice to the board before, while others obviously had not a care about it. Juliana was among the first group and she couldn't help but wonder about him. It was an innocent curiosity, she simply wanted to know more about the man behind the townsfolks whispered rumors was all. It was this curiosity that made her walk directly up to the bulletin board once he was out of sight. 

It was a help wanted advertisement. She read it over and giggled lightly. Robert McCracken, the eccentric night-shopper and almost-but-not-vampire, was looking for a maid. How strange. How strange and yet how perfectly normal. Perhaps the normality was what made it so strange. Anyone else it would have been nothing, but because it was him it was something. She had always been too curious for her own good, something her Mother had always warned her about, but she never learned. She took the notice off the board, the paper still had a feeling of warmth to it, and she decided that after she finished getting the loaf of bread for her aunt she would head over to the McCracken house in answer to his ad.

When she arrived at the house a little after noon she'd begun to feel a sense of nervousness that she couldn't explain. She'd been looking for work for months and had been to see plenty of well-off men and women for interviews. For some reason this felt different. Perhaps it was because of who the well-off man was. She didn't understand why it mattered at first, but then figured it was probably because none of the others she had spoken to had any sort of strangeness about them. She ran her hands over her dress, trying to smooth out any wrinkles and then did the same to her long red hair before knocking on the door. She took a second to inhale deeply and exhale and remind herself that no matter who was going to open that door this was all simply a job interview. A job interview to sate her curiosity.

Needless to say she had gotten the job. Right from that one interview. She had told him she was there in response to the ad and he had asked if she could handle coming over daily to maintain his home. Just your general cleaning, dusting, and whatnot. Of course she could handle it. And so he hired her. She begun work that very day and that very day she had gone home completely in love with the strange man who turns out was not so strange. Juliana set off to work only a short while after she had arrived, still not entirely sure of what all the details were (details such as pay, but she was ready to accept anything since any work is better than none and she would find out at the end of that week that her pay exceeded what both her parents had made combined at the height of their work), but she was just happy that she got to meet the man the people of the town are dying to know about, even if they won't admit it. The one detail she did know was that there was a room that she need not clean. It was a large room but in it was nothing but a grand piano. She wasn't barred from the room, not at all, but she was told that if it was occupied she need not clean it. She would come to find that the room was never unoccupied so long as Robert McCracken was home. It was beautiful, she'd never seen such a thing up close before in her life. They're way too expensive for anyone to afford. Not even the mayor had one! It's shiny surface reflected her image back to her when she got close enough. It was always clean and always in tune. Obviously it was the pride and joy of the man who owned it.

It was almost time for her to leave as she'd finished all the rooms except for one not including, of course, the piano room, the door to which was shut. She went to walk by the room so she could dust the final room and head on home but the most beautiful sounds met her ears. Her burning curiosity got the best of her and she cracked open the door and peered inside. The sounds grew louder and she could feel them within her bones. The pianist sat at the piano, his back to her, playing with such ease and such feeling. He wasn't reading from any sheet music, Juliana saw, he was simply making it up as he went along. She stood in the doorway and listened for how long she wasn't sure. The music changed key and tempo so many times eliciting a range of emotions from her; anger, love, passion, and one's she wasn't sure the names of. He feelings went in time with the tone and mood of the music and she would have lied if she said she didn't love watching the way her employer swayed along with the music or the way his long fingers played at the keys, it was almost as if he were caressing them with the care of a lover. It was beautiful; he was beautiful. After the longest time Juliana finally had to tear herself away to finish her work, after all she did not want to be caught spying and risk getting fired, and the act of closing the door to the beautiful music caused her to feel a pain her chest. 

So it was from that night on that before going home each night Juliana would open the door to the piano room and watch her employer play the piano. She would watch him pour his heart and soul into the music that was never the same each time. It was always new music and always so beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that she hated every second that passed when she couldn't hear it. Every night it caused her heartache to shut the door, quietly so he would not know, and go home for the night. 

It wasn't a secret to him, however, though he never said anything about knowing. He had figured out she would listen in as every time she opened the door the acoustics of the room changed ever so slightly, so slightly in fact that only after years of musical training and practice would one be able to notice, and he knew if she was there or not. He felt joy at having her listen in, though he was not going to be the one to invite her in to listen. He wanted her not to be afraid of him, he wanted her to not think of him as just an employer with whom she should only conduct herself in a formal matter. He wanted her to be herself, he wanted her to one day open that door and actually come in. To come in and dance or to come in and just listen it did not matter so long as it was her who made that move first. Until then all he could do was tempt her with songs, new songs each one made to be more beautiful than the last. After all he had a muse now, and every day she seemed more beautiful to him. The least he could do was try to make his songs even half as beautiful as he saw her.


End file.
